Images: The world's most hazardous jobs

The world's most hazardous jobs

Earning a living is no easy thing for hundreds of thousands of labourers across the globe. The world over, millions of people are employed in extremely hazardous industries just to provide a square meal for their families.

Work-related deaths and injuries that occur in these sectors are far higher than in any other conventional areas of human endeavour.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of hazardous jobs, but it merely scrapes the surface of such risky jobs. Many other jobs -- like children engaged in dangerous jobs, soldiers and policemen who face injury to life and limb everyday -- have not been featured here.

However, this list does provide an indicator to how people put their lives on the line to earn a living and to keep body and soul from parting company.

Image: Labourers hold their colleague to install underground electric cables on a roadside at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

The world's most hazardous jobs

Image: Palestinian farmer Isa Sawafta stands on the frame of his cucumber greenhouse as he tries to fix damage caused by powerful wind gusts in the West Bank village of Bardala, in the northern Jordan Valley.

The world's most hazardous jobs

Vietnam will need to import 3 million to 15 million tonnes of coal a year by 2015, rising to 21 million to 40 million annually by 2020, as new coal-fired power plants are built, Tran Xuan Hoa, chief executive of state mining firm Vinacomin said.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian country, which is the world's top anthracite exporter, will gradually cut coal exports to 3-5 million tonnes per year, predominantly for metallurgy, a trade ministry official said.

The world's most hazardous jobs

The world's most hazardous jobs

Image: A miner seals leaking ceramic pipes with volcanic mud at the sulphur mining operation at Kawah Ijen, a volcanic crater in Indonesia's East Java province.

The mining operation consists of channelling escaping volcanic gasses through networks of ceramic pipes from an active vent at the edge of the crater lake, resulting in the condensation of molten sulphur.

The deep red molten sulphur pours slowly from the end of the pipes into pools on the ground, turning into yellow cakes of sulphur after it cools.

It is then broken into large pieces to be carried by labourers to a collection centre at the foot of the volcano.

The world's most hazardous jobs

Image: Performers from Rajasthan perform stunts on their motorbike on the walls of a 'well of death' at a fair in Srinagar.

The performers earn their livelihood by performing dare-devil stunts by driving their bikes and cars on the walls of the 'well of death' and attract a large number of spectators from all walks of life.